Nikki Gemmell: Turn off the tech

I have a great nostalgia for the time before the smartphone invasion.

Is your smartphone eating your brain? Is it veering your sex life into something different — or non-existent? Changing how you work? Socialise? Sleep? Stand? Walk? A new study shows billions of dollars are being lost in workplace productivity because of increasing addictions to phones. The employment agency OfficeTeam found that in the US, workers are spending on average five hours a week on their mobiles during work time, gazing at screen morsels that have nothing to do with their jobs. Only five? So much rolling news to be checked, so many personal emails to read, games to be played; all those sites blocked by employers that have to be accessed somehow because we need to, must. We’re witnessing the digital drowning of an entire generation here. God help the children who’ve grown up with this, who have no memory of the expansive bliss and sparseness of the non-phone existence.

I wish I had less of the fret-fest that’s Donald Trump but can’t tear myself away from the compelling train wreck in my hand. Breaking news is breaking my equilibrium. Research shows many of us are spending almost nine hours a day logged onto a screen — more than most of us sleep. Then there are those sneaky screen peeks in the dead of night, the plips and pings of sleep-destruction, the sudden flare-ups on our blue screens as they accept more fuel to torment our sleep even further or have us pounce, first thing, upon waking.

‘Our poor brains, those saturated, fragile, exhausted vessels, need a cleansing.’

Our poor brains, those saturated, fragile, exhausted vessels. They need a break from this, a cleansing. Smartphones not only addle sleep and work but also self-esteem, reminding us of worlds we don’t live in and relationships we don’t have. And it’s not just the bottom-feeders being affected. This is Selena Gomez’s response when she became Instagram’s most followed person: “I sort of freaked out. It had become so consuming to me. It’s what I woke up to and what I went to sleep to. I was an addict, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn’t want to care about. I always end up feeling like shit when I look at Instagram.”

I have a great nostalgia for the time before the smartphone invasion. We now turn to our phones instead of personally and meaningfully interacting. I’m telling my kids to get off their screens as I scroll through my own phone, which isn’t good. It’s a lonely digital space of backs bowed and eyes trained downwards, turned in from the world. We’re not looking upwards and outwards. There’s a rule in this household that no one gets a mobile until high school but I dread that moment — the Great Disappearing as little heads are turned down and inward; as creativity and curiosity is lost. And it feels like a grievous loss.

And then there’s WhatsApp, another invasive messaging platform in an already crammed world. And no, I do not want screen alerts because every single one of them makes my stomach clench. It’s yet another thing that needs attending to, alerting me to some person left hanging if I don’t respond. Meanwhile, I’m screaming inside to exist in peace.

Recently, exhilaratingly, I had a digital detox. Out bush, writing, with no internet access or mobile coverage. It was a great stilling down. A rescue from this saturated world. I was flooded by creativity and calm, got my brain back when I thought I’d lost it. I remembered the person I was pre-phone, more disciplined and focused and curious about my immediate surroundings. Screen removal gave me back control. Serenity. Calm. The city world and all its distractions were washed off me; these were the clean, shining hours. It felt like a huge and replenishing exhalation.

But how to keep that feeling? That is the question, the impossible question.